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Thailand: The bloody civil war in Patani and the way to achieve peace

October 2013 – Links International Journal of Socialist
Renewal -- This article is an attempt to analyse the political situation
surrounding the bloody civil war in “Patani-Southern Thailand” from the
perspective of those who seek freedom, justice and self-determination. Unlike
most academic papers or books on the subject, this article is not aimed at top
politicians, military generals or officials of foreign powers, all of whom seek
to maintain their own class interests by stressing “stability” or measures to
“contain” the situation without any regard to the wishes of ordinary people.

According to the
internal security organisation of the Thai state, since January 1, 2004, 5105
people have been killed and 9372 injured in the civil war in the South.[2]
More than half of those killed were local ethnic Malays, which indicates that
Thai security forces, in and out of uniform, are doing most of the killing.

In this paper, I
refer to “Patani” or “Patani-Southern Thailand” as an historical unit covering
the three most southern provinces which the Thai state created out of the
destruction of the Patani sultanate. These are the provinces of Pattani, Yala
and Naratiwart. The majority of the population in these provinces are Malay
Muslims with their own language and culture.

Thai state as an
obstacle to peace and self-determination

The violent
conflict in Patani is caused by the process of Thai nation building and the
subsequent colonisation of ethnically diverse communities into a centralised
state, ruled directly from Bangkok, in the late 19th century. Thai nation
building can be understood as an attempt by the rulers of Bangkok to create a modern
centralised capitalist state, mirroring the colonial capitalist states which
were being created by the British, Dutch and French in Burma, Malaya, Indonesia
and Indo-China.[3] Most of these nation-building
projects have led to conflicts between the periphery and the centre, since the
new centralised political order destroyed previous forms of pre-capitalist regional
autonomy.[4]
The conflict in Patani is no exception.

Conflicts which
are rooted in history need to be re-fuelled by continuing grievances and these
grievances are the factors which explain why the people of Patani have little
faith in the Thai state today. In comparison, these factors are missing in north
or north-east Thailand, which though colonised by Bangkok in the same period of
capitalist nation building, are not involved in a similar civil war. More will
be said on these local grievances in Patani, but for the moment it is necessary
to point out that unlike the north and north-east, the old Patani rulers and
the entire Malay Muslim population of the area have been systematically
excluded from mainstream Thai society, in terms of politics, culture and
economic development. This explains the antagonism towards the Thai ruling
class in Patani.

It will not come
as a surprise to know that the Thai ruling class who control the Thai state
have a political, economic and social interest in maintaining the present
borders and preventing any separatist movements from splitting off areas which
are currently within these borders. States always exists in relation to other
states in the world, with more powerful states dominating weaker states in an
“imperialist” fashion.[5]
States also exist to control and rule over ordinary working people who make up
the bulk of its citizens. As Lenin wrote in “State and Revolution”, the
state is an instrument of class rule used to suppress other classes within
society. Thus any sign of weakness, where a particular ruling class is seen to
have to devolve power to others, or seen to lose control over certain areas,
puts that ruling class at a disadvantage in relation to its international rivals
and those who seek to challenge its rule from within. The Thai state is not a
superpower, but it is jealous of its power over the population and resources
within the present borders and it is also keen to act as a mini-imperialist
with regard to weaker neighbouring states such as Lao and Cambodia.

Those states that
rival Thailand in the region are the stronger states which are members of
ASEAN, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, Vietnam and the
Philippines.

For this reason,
the main obstacle to the self-determination for the people of Patani, is the
Thai state and its various constituents, especially the military. The Thai
ruling class will not concede autonomy or independence for the people of Patani
without a struggle.

Political
struggles by mass movements, whether or not they are involved in armed
struggles, strikes or mass protests, can be successful in forcing ruling
classes to concede changes in the structure and the shape of the state. But
ultimately change will be conceded by political decisions taken by politicians
in consultation with other members of the ruling class. If these politicians
are subjected to democratic elections and are accountable to the population it
can be easier to change their minds.

The Thai military

The Thai military,
in its present form, is a particularly powerful and intransigent component of
the ruling class in terms of progress to peace and self-determination in Patani.

Many people have
suggested that the military creates violent incidents in Patani in order to
justify asking for an ever-increasing budget. As a body of men, the military
benefit from this, often in a corrupt manner. Approximately 160 billion baht is
being spent by the Thai state in Patani and 70% of this goes to counter-insurgency.
The local economy of Patani, at 120 billion baht, is worth less than this
bloated military budget. Even so-called “development projects” in Patani, such
as road building, are given to military construction units.[6]
Few local jobs for local people are created.

However, the main
reason why the Thai military has an entrenched interest in opposing
self-determination by the people of Patani is a “political interest”.

The military
constantly intervene in politics, by staging coup d'états and changing
constitutions. The latest coup d'état was in 2006, when the democratically
elected and popular Thai Rak Thai government headed by Taksin Shinawat [also
referred to as Thaksin Shinawatra] was overthrown.[7]
The present army commander, General Prayut Junocha, feels able to state his
political opinion in public, as though he was a leading elected politician, on
many matters ranging from the war in Patani, to voting in elections and
political reform. In 2010 he was responsible, alongside the military-appointed
Prime Minsiter Abhisit Vejjajiva, for gunning down nearly 90 unarmed
pro-democracy demonstrators in Bangkok.

Because of the
long struggle for democracy in Thai society, undemocratic military intervention
in politics needs to be specially legitimised. The Thai military does this by
claiming that it alone is capable of protecting the monarchy and the unitary
Thai state. Both the monarchy and nationalism are used by the military to
justify its actions, with a myth created by the military that it serves the
monarchy, when in reality it is the other way round.

The military
gains from the fact that it can intervene in politics and commit state crimes
against the people with impunity. Military economic interests include owning
large sections of lucrative media outlets and having influence in state
enterprises.

For this reason
it is especially worrying that the Thai side in so-called “peace talks”, held
between the separatist Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN) and the Thai authorities
in early 2013, was headed and controlled by the military. The top Thai negotiator
was Lieutenant
General Paradon Pattanatabut, secretary-general of the National Security
Council, and GeneralPrayut Junocha
rejected out of hand the BRN demand for self-rule, by stating that he would
“never accept” any change to the unitary Thai state. Meanwhile, elected Prime
Minister Yingluck Shinawat [or Shinawatra] kept quiet about the whole process.
She is Taksin’s sister and the new head of Taksin’s Pua Thai[often also referred to as the Pheu Thai] party. Since the
election victory of Pua Thai in 2011, the government has gone out of its way to
bow to the wishes of the military. One consequence of this is that it has
accepted the military’s veto on any change to the draconian lèse majesté law and any release of
prisoners of conscience who are in prison under this law for opposing the
military coup of 2006.[8]

The hawks in the
Thai state hope that the insurgents will surrender and that talks between the
Thai and Malaysian governments, and between the Thai government and BRN
“separatist leaders” will help towards this stabilisation. Afterwards they
claim to want to attract business investment into the area. This policy is
supported by top army generals, Yingluck’s Pua Thai government, the pro-military
Democrat Partyand it is similar to policies pursued by the Taksin
administration before the 2006. These hawks talk in an abstract manner about
the need for a “political settlement”, but because they refuse to consider the
underlying root causes of the civil war, in practice they are only prepared to
consider a military or security type solution.

General Sonti Boonyaratgalin, leader of the 2006 coup and Matupum
Party leader, argued in November 2009 that “the pooling of resources and
responsibilities of relevant agencies with a clear chain of command will create
a breakthrough in the South”.[9] It did not and will
never solve the problem of Patani. The Matupum Party counts among its members
some Muslim politicians in the Wadah faction who were originally inside Thai Rak
Thai, and before that, part of the Chawalit Yongjaiyut’s New Aspirations Party.
Despite being co-opted into the mainstream Thai polity by people like retired
general and Privy Council chair Prem Tinsulanon in the 1980s, they are now
distant from the local population.

Of course, there
is a contradiction in the position of the military towards the war in Patani.
Most military commanders know deep down that they cannot beat the insurgents
because they have local support and are able to carry out many operations
freely.[10] The only strategy
that they have is to try to contain the violent situation so that it does not
get any worse. These people can only talk about making Thai state “command
structures” more efficient. Meanwhile, ordinary soldiers, many of whom are
recruited from the poor villages of the north-east, have no will to fight. They
care nothing about “the protection of the nation” and try just to survive their
tour of duty. However, some more intelligent military commanders with field
experience, like retired General Chawalit Yongjaiyut, have supported the idea
of special political autonomy for Patani.[11]
Chawalit gained experience from the conflict with the Communist Party of
Thailand in the late 1970s and understands that a political solution is
necessary.

No political
solution can be achieved while Patani is flooded by men with guns. Forty-five
per cent of the Thai military is currently occupying Patani and added to this
are the thousands of villagers who have been armed by the Thai state in
so-called “village protection squads”. Apart from the army, paramilitary rangers
and police, there are 3300 members of the Volunteer Defence Corps, 47,000
Village Defence Volunteers and 24,000 Village Protection Volunteers.[12]
The Village Protection Volunteers are an exclusively Buddhist force, under the queen’s
patronage.

The local
population cannot possibly participate in political discussions about their
future in this atmosphere of war, violence and fear. No political solution can
be achieved while negotiations with the separatists are not run by elected
politicians instead of the military.

In order to
achieve a political solution and self-determination in Patani, the power and
influence of the military in all aspects of Thai politics and society needs to
be drastically reduced. The military budget needs to be cut to the bone and
military officers removed from the media and state enterprises. Those who
ordered the shooting of civilians in Bangkok and in Patani and those who staged
coup d'états need to be brought to justice. These are the exact same factors
required to build democracy, freedom and social justice in the rest of
Thailand.

We can see that
freedom in Patani is closely linked to freedom in Bangkok or other areas of the
Thai state.

The question of
violence

As a Marxist, I
firmly believe that we have to side with all those who are oppressed by the
Thai state. In practice, this means supporting the right of the insurgents to
bear arms against the Thai state which has a long history of violent oppression
in the Patani. Abstract calls for both sides to use “non-violence”, often
voiced by NGOs, are not the solution. They merely end up by equating the Thai
state’s violence with that of the insurgents and fail to question the
legitimacy of the state to govern Thailand’s “colony” in Patani. Nevertheless,
as a Marxist, I also believe that armed struggle is not the solution. The
answer is mass mobilisations of people against the state. This must be
encouraged whenever it happens in Patani.

The anti-war
writer Arundhati Roy[13] once wrote that
any government’s condemnation of “terrorism” is only justified if the government
can prove that it is responsive to non-violent dissent. The Thai government has
ignored the feelings of local people in the Patani for decades. It turns a deaf
ear to their pleas that they want respect. It laughs in the face of those who
advocate human rights when people are tortured. Taksin’s campaign to get people
to fold paper birds to “forgive” the Patani people, whom he had just murdered
at Takbai in 2004, and the farce of “returning” a copy of the Patani cannon,
which was originally stolen by Thais, to the area, are some examples of the
insults which originate from the Thai state.[14]

Under the
emergency laws, no one in the South has the democratic space to hold political
discussions. What choice do people have other than turning to violent
resistance?

In another
article, Arundhati Roy explained that we in the social movements cannot condemn
terrorism if we do nothing to campaign against state terror ourselves. The Thai
social movements have for far too long been engrossed in single-issue campaigns
and people’s minds are made smaller by Thai nationalism.

Many talk about
the need to involve “civil society” and NGOs in building peace in Patani. Yet
who are these civil society actors? Are they those who wish for independence?
Are they middle-class academics? Or are they NGO activists who constantly call
for “peace” without challenging the nationalism of the Thai state?

Thai NGOs have an
appalling history of siding with the military which staged the coup d'état in
2006. They attacked what they called the “dictatorship of the majority” in
parliament and justified their alliance with royalists and the military by
claiming that the majority of poor people who voted for the Taksin government
“lacked knowledge and education”.[15]
Thai NGOs cannot possibly have a positive role in solving the conflict in
Patani.

The nation state of “Thailand” was
created by Bangkok’s colonisation of the north, north-east and south. However,
what was special about the South was that the Patani ruling class was never
co-opted or assimilated into the Thai ruling elite and the Muslim Malay
population have never been respected or seen as fellow citizens since then.
Bangkok and London destroyed and divided up the Patani Sultanate between them
and Bangkok has ruled the area like a colony ever since.

1890s King Chulalongkorn (Rama 5) seized half of the Patani
Sultanate. The Sultanate was divided between London and Bangkok under the
Treaty of 1909.

1923 Belukar Semak rebellion forced King Rama 6 to make
concessions to local culture.

1938 More enforced “Siamification” under the ultra-nationalist
dictator Field Marshall Pibun.

1946 Pridi Panomyong promoted local culture and in 1947 accepted
demands by Muslim religious leaders for a form of autonomy, but he was soon
driven from power by a coup led by Thai nationalist military leaders.

1960-1970 Thai state policy of “diluting” the Malay population by
resettling Thai-Lao Buddhists from the north eastof Thailand in the Patani area. This was carried out under various military
regimes, starting with Field Marshall Sarit Tanarat.Ban on the use of the Yawee Malay language in state
institutions including schools.

State crime at
Takbai

On October 25, 2004,
Thai government security forces broke up a demonstration at Takbaiin
the southern province of Naratiwat. Apart from using water cannon and tear gas,
troops opened fire with live ammunition above the heads of protesters, but some
fired directly into the crowd, killing seven people and wounding many others,
including a 14-year-old boy. There were villagers of all ages and sexes in the
crowd. After this, the troops moved in to capture young Muslim Malay men. While
women and children huddled in one corner, the men were stripped to the waist
and their hands were tied behind their backs. The prisoners were made to crawl
along the ground while troops rained kicks down upon their heads and bodies and
beat them with sticks. Many of the prisoners were roped together in a long line
and made to lie face down on the ground. The local military commander of the 4th
Area Army[17] told a reporter on
television that this action should be a lesson to anyone who dared to defy the government.
“We will do this again every time”,
he said. The whole event was captured on video, which only goes to show how
arrogant and self-confident the security forces were.[18]

Finally, the bound
prisoners were thrown into the backs of open-top army lorries, and made to lie,
layer upon layer, on top of each other. Troops stood on top of their human
cargo occasionally stamping on those who cried out for water or air and telling
them that soon they would “know what
real hell was like”.

Many hours later
the first lorry arrived at its destination, Inkayut Army Camp. A number of
prisoners who had been at the bottom of this lorry were found to have died in
transit, probably from suffocation and kidney damage. Six hours later the last
lorry arrived with almost all those on the bottom layers found to be dead.
During those six hours between the arrival of the first lorry and the last one,
no attempt was made by the authorities to change the methods of transporting
prisoners. In total nearly 80 prisoners died. We must agree with a Senate
report[19] on the incident
which concluded that this amounted to “deliberate criminal actions likely to
cause deaths” by the security forces. Prime Minister Taksin’s first response to
the incident was to praise the security forces for their “good work”. Later the
government claimed that the deaths were a regretful “accident”. Four years
later on February 9, 2008, Prime Minister Samak Suntarawej told Al Jazeera television that the men
who died at Takbai“just fell
on top of each other”… “what was wrong with that?” Later in the same
interview he lied about the October 6, 1976, massacre, saying that “Only one guy died”.

From October 6 to
Takbai: Thai state’s culture of violent crimes

The lies told by
Samak about Takbai and October 6 are clearly connected. Anyone watching the
Takbaiincident would be reminded of October 6, 1976, massacre of
students in Thammasart University.[20]
In 1976, after attacking a peaceful gathering of students with automatic
weapons, men and women were stripped to the waist and made by the police to
crawl along the ground under a hail of kicks and beatings. Some students were
dragged out of the campus and hung from trees, others were burnt alive in
make-shift bonfires, mainly by right-wing thugs, some of whom were members of
the ultra-right-wing Village Scout Movement.[21]

After both Takbai
2004 and October 6, 1976, government spokespersons told deliberate lies. One
lie was that the security forces were “forced to act as the situation was
getting out of hand”. In fact this was never the case. At Takbai, Senator
Chermsak Pintong reported that the security forces admitted to a team of
investigating senators that they broke up the demonstration in order to arrest
100 ring leaders, the names and photographs of whom were on a government
blacklist. Under the 1997 constitution, Thai citizens were supposed to have the
right to peaceful protest and were supposed to be innocent before trial. The
actions of the police and army at Takbai show that they did not regard the local
villagers as citizens. The demonstration was more or less peaceful until it was
broken up violently by security forces. In the minds of the troops and their
commanders, the Takbai prisoners were captured prisoners of war, “nasty
foreigners” or “enemies of the state” who needed to be punished. So were the
students at Thammasart in 1976.

After October 6, 1976,
and Takbai 2004, government spokespeople also claimed that the trouble makers
were foreigners and couldn’t speak Thai. In 1976 they were supposed to be
Vietnamese.[22] In 2004 the state
claimed that they were Arabs or Malays. All prisoners killed or captured in
1976, and at Takbai in 2004, were Thai-speaking Thai citizens. Government
spokespeople also told lies that the students in 1976 and the demonstrators at
Takbai in 2004 were well armed and posed a threat to security forces. There is
no evidence to support this. No weapons were found at either site. At Takbai a
rusty rifle, which had been lying in the river for years, was paraded as
“evidence”.

After Takbai, the
queen spoke of her concern for Thai Buddhists in the South. No mention was made
of our Muslim Malay brothers or sisters. No mention was made of Takbaiand
worse still, the queen called on the Village Scout Movement to mobilise once
again to save the country.[23] Luckily most village
scouts are in their sixties and unlikely to commit violent acts anymore.

After the
military coup of September 19, 2006, the junta’s prime minister travelled down
to the Patani to “apologise” for what the Taksin government had done.[24] He announced that
charges againstsome demonstrators would be lifted. Yet, his government,
and the previous Taksin government, did not prosecute a single member of the
security forces for the Takbai incident. No holder of political office has been
punished either. To this day Thai officials can kill with total impunity. In
2007 the junta continued to emphasise the military “solution” in the South with
a troop surge. In January 2007 the junta renewed the Taksin government’s
southern emergency decree, which gives all security forces sweeping powers and
immunity from prosecution.

Takbai was not
the only violent incident to capture the news headlines. In April 2004, about 100
youths wearing “magical” Islamic headbands attacked police stations in various
locations. But they were only armed with swords and rusty knives. They were
shot down with automatic fire. Discontent was being articulated through a
religious self-sacrifice. In one of the worst incidents that day, the army
attacked the ancient Krue-Samosque with heavy weapons after the youths
fled into the building. Ex-Senator Kraisak Choonhawan maintained that apart
from the excessive force shown by the government, some prisoners in this event
were bound and then executed in cold blood. He was referring to a group of
youths from a local football team who were shot at point-blank range at Saba
Yoi. The army officer in charge of the bloodbath at Krue-Sa was General Punlop
Pinmanee. In 2002 he told a local newspaper that in the old days the army
simply used to shoot rural dissidents and Communists. Now they send people
round to intimidate their wives.[25] No state official
has been punished for the events at Krue-Sa.

Torture
and detention without trial

The military push
in the South under the junta’s government, which started in June 2007, resulted
in 1000 detentions without trial in the first two months. The military spokesperson
for the “joint civilian, military and police command” in the South, General Uk
Tiproj, claimed that those detained were people with “misguided beliefs who needed to be re-educated”.[26]

The Southern
Lawyers’ Centre reported that between July 2007 and February 2008 there were 59
documented cases of torture by the security forces. In two incidents the
torture resulted in death. In late January 2008 seven activist students from
Yala were arrested and tortured.[27]Torture methods included
beatings, being imprisoned, wet and cold, in air-conditioned rooms and the use
of electric shocks.[28] According to the
Lawyers’ Centre, most of the torture occurred in the first three days of
detention, when prisoners were not allowed any visitors. The places where
torture occurred were the Yala Special Unit 11section of the Yala ArmyRangers
camp and the Inkayut Army Camp in Patani. Needless to say, no one has been
punished for killing and torturing detainees.

Violence and co-option

The root cause of today’s violence can
be traced back to the creation of “Thailand” as a nation state in the 19th century.
But the historical causes alone are not enough to explain the present civil
war. Continuous repressive policies towards the local inhabitants by the Thai
state over the years have refuelled resentment.

Duncan McCargo
points out that the southern conflict is not a religious conflict between
Muslims and Buddhists and that the Thai state has a tradition of murder,
massacre and mayhem in the region. McCargo also shows that the Thai state has
used a “dual track” policy of repression and co-opting local religious leaders
and politicians in order to control the area, the latter especially in the
period when Prem Tinsulanon was prime minister in the early 1980s[29] but also for a
short time between 2004 and 2005 under Taksin Shinawat.[30]

By 1988 Thailand
had become much more democratic with a fully elected prime minister and government.
Local Muslim politicians were encouraged to join mainstream political parties,
especially retired General Chawalit Yongjaiyut’s New Aspirations Party, where
they formed a group known as the Wadah Faction.[31]

By the late 1990s
Prem’s policy of co-opting local leaders was beginning to fall apart because it
did little to solve the marginalisation of the majority of the Muslim Malay
population and resulted in a gap opening up between grassroots people and their
official leaders or representatives.

Those who wish to
pin the blame for the violence on the Taksin government alone claim that he
meddled in the security structures which were controlling the peace in the
region. This is both unhistorical and completely ignores the fact that the
unrest has been going on in various forms for over a century and that “peace
deals” made by the Thai state in the mid-1980s with local elites were failing
to address real grievances. Nevertheless, the Takbai and Krue-Sa massacres
under the Taksin government had a big impact on the rise of the insurgency.

Unhelpful
explanations about the violence in Patani

There are a
number of irrelevant or unhelpful explanations for the violence in Patani. They
all share a common thread which ignores and dismisses the oppression of the
Muslim Malays by the Thai state. They also share the belief that the locals are
somehow “incapable” of conducting a home-grown insurgency without outside
instigation and support. As with most “elite theories”, history and conflict
are confined to actions of the ruling elites while the general population are
regarded as mainly ignorant passive spectators. Those who promote such theories
wish to ignore the political and social causes of the civil war and concentrate
on using military and diplomatic solutions to “end” the conflict while
retaining existing state structures.

One theory claims
that the violence is created by disgruntled army officers, afraid of losing a
share of the lucrative cross-border black-market trade. According to the theory,
these soldiers sponsor the violence in order to “prove” that the army is still
needed. It is true that the military is involved in illegal cross-border
trading and that if they were withdrawn from the area they would lose this
lucrative activity. But this theory begs the important question about why
soldiers occupy Patani as a colony in the first place, unlike the situation in
the north or the north-east. It is also quite clear that there has been an
insurgent movement throughout recent history and it enjoys support from
important sections of the local population for real reasons.

Another theory
claims that it is just the work of “foreign Islamic fanatics”, who have managed
to brainwash some local youths into supporting a separatist movement. George
Bush and Tony Blair’s encouragement of Islamophobia to support their invasions
of Afghanistan and Iraq stirred-up such views and allowed human rights abuses
against Muslims worldwide. But why would local youths just allow themselves to
be brainwashed if there was not just cause? There is every indication that the
insurgency is home grown for good reasons: there has been a history of state
repression. Nevertheless, local insurgents and separatist movements have built
links with sympathetic foreign governments and organisations.[32] This does not,
however, indicate that the civil war is somehow instigated from abroad by
“international Muslim extremists”.

Some academics
have maintained that the violence started as a “patch war” between the royal palace,
with the support of the army, and the Taksin government. Duncan McCargo[33] suggests that the
southern violence can be explained as conflict between “Network Monarchy” and
“Network Taksin”. McCargo also expanded this network conflict theory to include
the conflict between the Red Shirts and the Yellow Shirts in other regions of
Thailand after the 2006 coup d'état.

This is similar
to the attempts to explain the September 19 coup d'état as a conflict between “feudalism”
and “capitalism”, along old Stalinist lines. It is true that the Taksin government
wanted to reduce the role of the military in controlling Patani and transfer
many powers to the police. But this was more about his attempts to “regularise”
governance in the region and also to stamp out the black market, a policy
pursued in other parts of the country. This undoubtedly caused resentment among
the army, but it does not explain the main underlying causes of the civil war.

The “network
conflict” is an elite, top-down view of events which denies any role by
ordinary people. It denies any reason for Malay Muslims to be antagonistic to
the Thai state. Neither can it explain the general political crisis and
conflict between Red Shirts and Yellow Shirts following the 2006 coup d'état.[34]

Who are the
insurgents?

Back in the 1970s
a clear separatist movement existed, cooperating in its struggle against the
Thai state with the Communist partiesof Thailand and Malaysia. The
Barisan Revolusi Nasional(BRN) was established in 1963 and the Patani
United Liberation Organisation (PULO) was founded in 1968.

PULO are not in a
position to control much of what is happening on the ground today. One PULO
activist admitted to the BBC that, “Right now there is a group which has a lot of young blood.
They're quick and fast and they don't worry what will happen after they do
something. They don't care because they want the Government to have a big
reaction, which will cause more problems.”[35]

By 1984 the BRN
had split into three. One organisation which originated from the BRN is the
Barisan Revolusi Nasional-Koordinasi (BRN-C). By 2005 the Runda Kumpulan Kecil(RKK or Patani State Restoration Unit) was becoming more prominent in the
insurgency. It is believed to be a loose grouping of people from the BRN-C who
trained in Indonesia. There seem to be many organisations operating today. They
do not claim responsibility for their actions because by deliberately not
claiming responsibility they make it extremely hard for the Thai Intelligence
services to understand who is who and which of the various organisations is
taking what action.[36] This has been
described by journalists as a “war between the Thai army and ghosts”.

The Patani
insurgency follows the patterns of many Middle-Eastern struggles against
Western imperialism and local despotic ruling classes. In the 1960s and 1970s
they were secular movements allied to Communist parties. But with the decline
of the Communist parties, partly as a result of their collaboration with local
despots, especially in the Middle East, rebels and insurgents turned to new
forms of ideology, mainly radical Islam.[37]
This explains why radical Islam is the banner under which the present day
insurgents fight. It is not the rise of radical Islam which has caused the
violence. The brutal actions of Thai governments and the failure of the Communist
Party of Thailand (CPT) have pushed radicals into adopting Islam.

Listen to local
people

When considering
the violence in Patani, we need to listen to what local people are saying.
Local Muslim people do not generally hate their Buddhist neighbours. The civil
war never started as “communal violence” between people of differing religions.
This is still the case now, despite the counter-productive efforts by Thai governments
in saturating the region with arms, including the arming of local villagers.

Public spaces
such as Buddhist temples and schools have also been militarised by the Thai
state. Some Buddhist monks have been brutally killed and in June 2009 armed
Buddhists gunned down praying Muslims at the Al Furqan Mosque. It is thought
that they were led by an ex-military ranger. Apart from soldiers and rebels,
local traders, rubber tappers, priests, Imams, ordinary villagers, school
teachers and government officials have all been victims of violence. Most of
those killed have died at the hands of the security forces.

In the late 1990s
most local people were not really demanding a separate state. Thai government
violence may now have pushed people towards supporting separation. Patani has
been neglected economically and when there has been development it has not been
the majority of local Malay Muslims who have benefited. There is a high level
of unemployment in the area and many people seek work in neighbouring Malaysia.
Nevertheless, economic development alone cannot solve the violence.

What local people
are saying more than anything is that they want respect. Their religion,
language and culture are not respected by the Thai state. The state education system
emphasises Thai, Buddhist and Bangkok history and culture. This is why schools
are often burnt. In the past 60 years successive Thai governments have arrested
religious leaders, banned the teaching of yawee
(the local dialect of Malay spoken in the area), closed religious schools,
forced students to learn the Thai language, forced students to wear Thai-style
clothes, encouraged people to change their names to “Thai” names and forcibly
changed the names of local districts to “Thai-sounding” names. All this has
been carried out by Bangkok governments which maintain an occupying army in the
southern border provinces.[38]

In the 1960s and
1970s the military dictatorships settled some Buddhist north-easterners in the South
in order to “strengthen” the occupation.[39]
It reminds one of the British policy in Northern Ireland or Palestine. Buddhist
temples were built in predominantly Muslim areas. In this period there were
times when Muslims were made to bow down before Buddha images. Even now they
are made to bow down before pictures of the king, which is an offence to their
religion. There are house searches by troops using dogs. Again this is an
insult to Muslims. Recently soldiers were conscripted to become monks in
southern temples and the temples have army guards.

The occupying
army and the police are feared and hated. Local people know that their sons,
brothers and fathers have been taken away at night, then tortured and killed by
the Thai army and police, often in plain clothes.[40]
In 2004, the defence lawyer Somchai Nilapaichit, who was a key human rights
activist on this issue of torture, was kidnapped in Bangkok and killed by
police from different units. He was trying to expose police tactics in
torturing suspects into confessions about stealing guns from an army camp in
early 2004. The involvement of police from different units in his murder
indicates a green light from above: from Prime Minister Taksin and others in
his government. To date, no one has been punished for Somchai’s murder and his
body has not been found.

It isn’t hard to
find green lights, right at the top, for Thai state violence. No one has been
punished for the 1976 bloodbath at Thammasart, the May 1992 massacre or for the
killings at Takbai or Krue-Sa in 2004. The Taksin government also sanctioned
the extrajudicial murder of over 3000 “drug suspects” in its war on drugs. Many
were killed in Patani, others killed were among northern ethnic minorities. The
king approved of the war on drugs and the October 6 massacre. The military-installed
Democrat Party government contributed to further state crimes in 2010 and
together with the army generals, sanctioned the shooting of pro-democracy civilians
in Bangkok. The courts have always protected those in power and offer no
justice.

After the
February 2005 election Taksin’s party lost almost all seats in the South
because of its policies, especially the Takbai incident. But it gained a huge
overall majority nationally. The government established the National
Reconciliation Commission under ex-prime minister Anand Panyarachun. He had served
as a civilian PM under a military junta in 1991. Most people in the Patani
doubted whether this commission would solve their problems. Anand was quoted in
the press as saying that self-rule and autonomy were “out of the question” and
that people should “forget” the Takbaimassacre.[41]

Despite Anand’s
remarks, the report of the National Reconciliation Commission came up with some
progressive statements and suggestions.[42]
First, it stated that the problems in the South stemmed from the fact that
there was a lack of justice and respect and that various governments had not
pursued a peaceful solution. It went on to describe how the Thai Rak Thai government
had systematically abused human rights and was engaged in extrajudicial
killings. The commission suggested that local communities in Patani be empowered
to control their own natural resources, that civil society play a central part
in creating justice and that the local Yawee language be used as a working language,
alongside Thai, in all government departments.

The latter
suggestion on language is vital if local people are not to be discriminated
against, especially by government bodies.[43]
Yet it was quickly rejected by both Taksin and Privy Council chair General Prem
Tinsulanon.[44]

The weakness of
the ‘armed-struggle’ strategy

The insurgent
strategy of using “ghosts” to attack the Thai security forces and then not
claiming responsibility might have some military advantages, but such
advantages are massively out-weighed by the political disadvantages. By not
claiming responsibility for attacks on “legitimate military targets” and
confining attacks to such targets, the insurgents allow the Thai military to
use death squads, usually out of uniform, to attack and kill local activists
and ordinary civilians who are on government blacklists. The government and
mainstream media can then paint a picture of the insurgents as “armed
gangsters” who kill people indiscriminately. This spreads fear among the local
civilian population and is counter-productive to building real mass support
among local villagers and also among the general Thai population in other
regions. The ghost war strategy plays into the hands of the Thai state’s dirty
war.

The Patani
insurgents cannot hope to beat the Thai military in a military struggle. They
are significantly less well armed and funded and the local population which
might support the insurgency is a small minority of the population within the
current Thai state.

To make any
political progress towards liberation and self-determination, the Patani
movement needs to build a mass political party which can operate legally and
put forward political demands which go beyond just “Patani nationalism”. The
party would have to address economic and social issues and be capable of
winning support from local Thai Buddhists and also capable of winning
solidarity from social movements in the central, north and north-eastern
regions of Thailand.

Mass political
action is the answer

The resistance
today is not just about planting bombs and shooting state officials.
Communities act in a united way to protect themselves from the security forces
who constantly abduct and kill people. Women and children block the roads and
stop soldiers or police from entering villagers. On September 4, 2005, they
blocked the entrance to Ban Lahan in Naratiwat and told the provincial governor
that he and his soldiers were not welcome in their village.[45]
Two weeks later villagers blocked the road to Tanyong Limo. Earlier two marines
had been captured by villagers and then killed by unknown militants. Villagers
suspect that the marines were members of a death squad sent in to kill local
people.[46] The villagers held
up posters aimed at the authorities, saying: “You are the real terrorists.” In November 2006, villagers
protested at a school in Yala, demanding that troops leave the area. One of
their posters read: “All you
wicked soldiers … get out of our village. You come here and destroy our village
by killing innocent people. Get out!”[47]

Many slogans
against the military are painted on roads. In August 2007 “Darika”[48] made a note of
some:

“Peace will come when there are no soldiers.”

“We don’t want the soldiers in our village. We are afraid.”

“Without the soldiers, the people will be happy.”

“The curfew is unjust. They are killing innocents.”

Such protests in
villages continue to occur today after various incidents involving the security
forces.

On May 31, 2007,
the Student Network to Defend the People organised a mass rally of 3000 at the Patani
Central Mosque. The rally started because of four murders and one rape carried
out by Army Rangers at a village in Yala. The demands of this peaceful protest
were for a total review of government policy in the South and a withdrawal of
soldiers from the area.[49]

Assistant professor
Dr Srisompop Jitpiromsri from Songkla University reported that between 2005 and
2008 there were a total of 26 mass demonstrations in the Patani. Thirteen of
them were to demand the release of detainees and another five demanded that
troops and police leave the area. These mass actions by villagers and students
are the real hope for freedom and peace in the South. Yet the Thai state and
the mainstream media brand these mobilisations as “violent”. They make no
distinction between peaceful social movements and the armed insurgency. The
arrest and torture of seven Yala student activists in 2008 confirms this point.[50]

If the mass
action of these social movements is to succeed, we must give them every
encouragement and support.

Conclusion

It should be
obvious that the struggle for self-determination in Patani is closely connected
to the struggle for democracy and freedom in Thailand as a whole. For both to
be achieved, the power and influence of the Thai military needs to be reduced
and draconian laws which limit freedom of expression, such as the emergency law
and the lèse majesté law, must be repealed. Social movements with mass support
and a willingness to engage in solidarity between issues and struggles will be
crucial. Unfortunately the Red Shirt movement, which was Thailand’s largest
social movement for democracy in recent years, has fallen in behind the Pua
Thai government which is reconciled with the military. The UDD leadership of
the Red Shirts must take much responsibility for this betrayal.

Unless a new
pro-democracy movement which is independent from Pua Thai and the military and
is willing to reject conservative Thai nationalism can arise, the path towardsself-determination in Patani
and freedom and democracy in the other regions of Thailand will be a long one.

In the short term, we must demand the removal of Thai
troops from Patani and a general demilitarisation of the area. Emergency
security laws should also be repealed and standards of human rights have to be
established in Patani and regions of Thailand to the north, by punishing state
crimes and releasing political prisoners.

Change may be difficult, but it is not impossible. Unlike
present-day constitutions, Thailand’s first constitution after the 1932
revolution against the absolute monarchy did not stress the unitary Thai state.
It stressed the political sovereignty of the people. Pridi Panomyong’s
government in 1947 also accepted the principle of autonomy for Patani. We need
to fight for those principles today.

Notes

[1]Giles Ji Ungpakorn is a political commentator and dissident. In February 2009
he had to leave Thailand for exile in Britain because he was charged
with lèse majesté for writing a book criticising
the 2006 military coup. He is a member of Left Turn Thailand, a socialist organisation. His book, Thailand’s Crisis and the
Fight for Democracy, will be of interest to
activists, academics and journalists who watch Thai
politics, democratisation and NGOs. His website is at http://redthaisocialist.com/. Email: ji.ungpakorn@gmail.com.

[21] Katherine Bowie (1997), Rituals of
National Loyalty. An Anthropology of the State and Village Scout Movement in
Thailand. Columbia University Press. Giles Ji Ungpakorn ed. (2003), Radicalising Thailand: New Political
Perspectives. Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University.

[38] Ahmad
Somboon Bualuang (2006), “Malay, the basic culture”. In The situation on the
Southern border. The views of Civil Society. Published by theCoordinating
Committee of the Peoples Sector for the Southern Border Provinces (in Thai).

[39] There
have been some Buddhists living in the region for centuries.

[40] Akerin
Tuansiri (2006), “Student activities in the violent areas of the Southern
border provinces”. In The situation on the Southern border. The views of
Civil Society. Already quoted (in Thai).

Comments

So-called “peace talks” with
Muslim Malay rebels will not solve the crisis

Giles Ji Ungpakorn

September 16, 2014

A large proportion of the Muslim Malay population in “Patani” want
freedom and self-determination. Many want independence from the oppressive Thai
state. This is about basic democracy.

But Thailand is not a
democracy. Today it is ruled by a backward military junta which has suppressed
democracy and freedom of expression throughout the country. What is more, the
junta is in the process of crafting a permanent non-democratic political
system.

The military is
hell-bent on maintaining Thailand as a unitary state. It is fanatically
nationalistic and royalist. It has death squads who carry out extra-judiciary
killings in Patani. It has not hesitated to shoot down pro-democracy
demonstrators in the streets of Bangkok. It sanctions torture of dissidents in
Patani, but also in Bangkok.

So how can anyone
believe that negotiations between the rebel groups, PULO/BRN, and the Thai
military could possibly result in a peace deal?

The military’s main aim
in these talks is to achieve a negotiated surrender by the armed rebels in
return for a few crumbs like extra development grants or raising the status of
the local Yawee language. But they will not countenance independence for Patani
or even democratic autonomy.

The fact that we do not
really know exactly what proportion of local people in Patani support PULO or
BRN is because there is no freedom of expression. Political parties advocating
independence are banned and their members would be subjected to brutal
repression. The whole area is highly
militarised, both by the Thai army and its auxiliary forces, and also by the
shadowy armed rebels. Under such circumstances no open discussions about the
future of Patani can take place. Such discussions would need to include all the
multitude of political views held by all ethnic and religious groups and the
various social classes among the local population.

Real negotiations about
the future of Patani can only take place between elected civilian
representatives. The army should play no part in this or in the wider political
sphere.

It might be possible
for the military to brutalise and bribe PULO and BRN into a negotiated
surrender. That has happened before. But it would merely prolong this chronic
crisis while a new generation of fighters develops out of the continuing state
of injustice.

The future for peace
and stability in Patani is closely bound up with the state of democracy in Thai
society. But democracy alone is not enough. We know how the democratically
elected Taksin government presided over the cold blooded murder many innocent
young men at Takbai in 2004. What is also needed, therefore, is a movement,
based outside Patani, which mobilises against the nationalist jingoism of the
Thai state.